Film Friday: Edge of Tomorrow, The Animal Project, Brothers Hypnotic and more

The Animal Project (Ingrid Veninger) feels like a transitional project for director Veninger - and I mean that in a good way. The reigning queen of lo-fi Canadian cinema has upped her game without abandoning any of her characteristic whimsy. Her tale of an acting teacher (Aaron Poole) who dresses his students in animal costumes and sends them out into Toronto to jump around and hug people has a narrative structure with solid story beats rather than the gentle drift of Only, Modra and i am a good person/i am a bad person. It also further distinguishes itself with a more formal visual style than she's attempted before. Veninger's still doing what she does best: finding moving moments of emotional connection between awkward, confused people. It's just that this time one of them's wearing a squirrel suit. 90 min.

Brothers Hypnotic (Reuben Atlas) is a fascinating look at the jazz, funk, soul and hip-hop outfit Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, which consists of eight real-life brothers, all sons (from three different moms) of jazz trumpeter and African rights activist Phil Cohran. When the film begins, director Atlas finds the Chicago-born kids trying to make it in the Big Apple, playing on street corners, hawking CDs and talking about how they don't want to sell out to record companies. That suspicion of the Man comes from growing up with their dad, who played with the greats but was eventually shut out of the biz. Will the sons follow their father's example or adapt not only to new kinds of music, but new ways of marketing themselves? The film is rich with themes, and Atlas expertly interweaves archival footage, present-day interviews and clips of jams with Mos Def and Prince. And there's unexpected emotional resonance near the end when the boys ask their dad to collaborate on a track called, appropriately enough, Black Boy. 80 min.

Chef (Jon Favreau) hangs its drama on a social-media premise that's a little on the cutesy side. Writer/director/star Favreau plays a celebrity chef who picks a Twitter fight with a restaurant critic (Oliver Platt) that ends up torching his career, forcing him to start over in a food truck with his son (Emjay Anthony) and best pal (John Leguizamo). It's 20 minutes too long and a hair too manipulative, but Favreau is intent on delivering such a pleasurable little movie that it almost seems unfair to hold his excesses against him - and you wouldn't want him to cut the cameos from his Marvel buddies. Bonus points for the exquisite food prep sequences, the most convincing I've seen in years; even vegans are likely to leave the theatre craving a Cuban sandwich. 115 min.

Edge of Tomorrow (Doug Liman) is a surprisingly playful mashup of Groundhog Day and Aliens, with Tom Cruise as a cowardly warrior who's killed battling an ET invasion in France, only to find himself reliving the events leading up to his death over and over, often alongside a veteran of a previous battle (Emily Blunt) who's oddly sympathetic to his plight. Using Hiroshi Sakurazaka's graphic novel All You Need Is Kill as a springboard, Liman (The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith) and his screenwriters have devised an epic-ish SF actioner that's also refreshingly self-aware, using its rewind-repeat narrative to layer in subtle character beats, clever plot twists and at least one brilliant running gag. Cruise is solid, Blunt is great, Brendan Gleeson turns up as a pissy general, and Bill Paxton is basically Ned Ryerson in military fatigues. What else do you want from a summer movie? 113 min.

The Immigrant (James Gray) revisits an earlier mode of cinema with a modern intelligence, unpacking the images and plots to reveal the underlying social and dramatic elements. Director/co-writer Gray's drama is set in the winter of 1921, as Polish refugee Ewa (Marion Cotillard) arrives at Ellis Island and is separated from her ailing sister. Ewa is taken in by a violent hustler (Joaquin Phoenix) who exploits her; a chance meeting with a charming stage magician (Jeremy Renner) offers her a glimmer of hope. Gray strikes a measured, almost ascetic tone, letting Darius Khondji's meticulous camera set the scene and the actors play it out perfectly. Cotillard conveys complex emotional shifts in the flicker of an eyelid, and Phoenix and Renner invest their stock characters with ambiguity and humanity. There's much more here than a simple tale of good and evil. Some subtitles. 120 min.

The Sacrament (Ti West) follows a trio of guys from Vice to an out-of-country commune where one of their sisters is living. They plan on documenting the trip video-travelogue-style. After being helicoptered to the compound (Georgia convincingly made to look tropical), they're held back by machine-gun-toting security guards: first red flag. Once inside, though, everything seems fine. The sister (Amy Seimetz) appears happy, strangers praise their leader, and they're even granted an interview with the man - who's called simply "Father" - that night. This public chat between on-camera guy Sam (AJ Bowen) and the messianic, Jim Jonesesque figure (Gene Jones) is the film's centrepiece, and absolutely riveting, as Father twists the questions around to play to his followers. Look for a sly critique of America's wars and the plight of its inner cities. The chaos that follows, effectively caught on hand-held shakycam, is full of tension and high-stakes situations. While there aren't many surprises, the terror cuts deeper because the premise - as history has proven - is all too real. 99 min.

Being Ginger (Scott P. Harris) chronicles director Harris's search for why there's a dating bias against gingers like him. It starts off like some icky, self-indulgent vanity project, but Harris has an appealing, unpretentious and friendly presence, and he seems up for anything - including asking out a woman who says she likes redheads because of Harry Potter's pal Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Damian Lewis from Homeland. The film gathers emotional weight when Harris opens up about being bullied. He doesn't dig too deeply into the societal reasons for the prejudice or even offer a list of famous redheads. Those things could have provided a bit more context and increased the running time. 69 min.

Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon (Mike Myers) is an entertaining but one-note profile on one of Hollywood's "nicest" behind-the-scenes players, covering superstar talent manager Gordon's rise, influence and generosity as a human being. Familiar names like Sylvester Stallone, Michael Douglas, Alice Cooper and Emeril Lagasse echo director Myers's warm sentiments. If Gordon has flaws (womanizer being the most evident), they're shrugged off as endearing, while darker chapters are hinted at and then ignored, leaving massive gaps in the narrative. The doc is shapeless as a consequence, but there are recollections of drug-fuelled parties with Jimi Hendrix, publicity stunts with Alice Cooper and joint custody of a cat with Cary Grant. 85 min.

Tracks (John Curran) stars Mia Wasikowska as real-life adventurer Robyn Davidson, who in 1977 walked 2,750 kilometres through the Australian desert with only three camels and her dog by her side. The actor is riveting as the anti-social traveller - a good thing, given that she's in every frame. And as her intrepid photographer, who interrupts her trek several times during her journey, Adam Driver (Girls) is charming. But the script stays almost too true to reality and lacks conflict and tension until very near the end. Fortunately, you can just sit back and groove on the images. The film is gorgeous, thanks to cinematographer Mandy Walker's expert eye. She's right up there with Wasikowska as the star of this film. 112 min.

Alfred Uhry's Driving Miss Daisy is a high-def broadcast of the successful recent touring production of Uhry's play about an elderly Southern Jewish woman and her African-American chauffeur, starring Angela Lansbury and James Earl Jones. 90 min.

The Fault in Our Stars (Josh Boone) adapts John Green's young adult bestseller about the romance between two teenage cancer patients. Screened after press time - see review June 6 at nowtoronto.com/movies. 125 min.